Read this to make your resumes more targeted, more useful for the hiring managers, and let it serve the purpose it needs to serve - be the marketing document for YOU the product.

1. Creating Purposeful
Resumes
Tips for creating effective resumes
An effective resume servesthe purpose forwhichitexists:present you in an impactful way and compel
the reader to invite you for an interview. This document provides strategies to apply when creating
resume, so that desired results can be achieved.
MrityunjayKumar
Chief CareerCoach
info@careerbloom.in

2. Creating Purposeful Resumes
© 2016 Career Bloom http://careerbloom.in Page 1
Table of Contents
Introduction.......................................................................................................................................2
Readers of a Resume ..........................................................................................................................2
Principles for a good resume...............................................................................................................3
Creating domain-independent resumes...............................................................................................4
Resume Structure...............................................................................................................................6
Objective....................................................................................................................................6
Strengths....................................................................................................................................6
Achievements .............................................................................................................................6
Experience Summary...................................................................................................................6
Experience details .......................................................................................................................6
Conclusion .........................................................................................................................................8

3. Creating Purposeful Resumes
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Introduction
Put simply, a resume is a chronicle of your past accomplishments and your strengths that might be of
interest to a prospective employer. A resume is used in contexts other than employment (college
applications,visaapplications,solicitingfundingforyourcompany,etc.),butforbrevity,we will focuson
employment context.
An effective resume presents you in an impactful way and compels the reader to invite you to an
interview. Italsoacts as a marketingbrochure forthe productYOU and presentsthe value youoffer to a
prospective ‘buyer’(employer).Therefore,itisveryimportant to construct this document carefully and
provide right information that conveys your value in the best possible manner. Rest of this document
will focus on how to create such a document. These resumes will work for all kinds of roles.
Readers of a Resume
It is very important to understand the readers and the context in which they read the resume.
Resume is read by following people:
1. Automated system - Filters the resume based on keywords and key phrases. Resume should have
enough keywords related to the domain of the target company.
2. Recruitmentconsultant (outside the company) - Screensthe resume forafit.The resume should be
interesting enough for this person so that it can be shortlisted.
3. HR/Recruitment (within the company) - Screens the resume provided by recruitment consultant
and appliesmore filtering(orjustpassesitonto hiringmanager).Shouldprovide clearsummaryand
well-known keywords relevant to the company and the job description.
4. Hiring manager (in some cases) -Make sure they are not wasting time interviewing a wrong guy.
Resume should clearly summarize the accomplishments and value to the new org.
5. Interviewer– Prepare foran interview.Resumeshould convey an image of a strong candidate who
has all the right skills, strengths and experience for the target company, so that interviewer is
warmed up (and has positive bias) to have a favorable interview.
They will exhibit following characteristics:
1. Resume readerhas no more than 2 minutes to spend on your resume, and that he uses first 30
seconds to decide whether to spend that 2 minutes or not.
2. Reader has no understanding of your domain. However, he understands details of his own
domain and basics of IT industry
3. Person screening your resume will not be an employee of the company (most HR functions of
recruitment are outsourced these days) and may not know much about their own company
except for some keywords and phrases.
4. Interviewers will not read your full resume, they will glance through it

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Principles for a good resume
1. Length: Create 2 page resume,withfirstpage containingthe summary of accomplishments and
the value you provide, and second page containing details to substantiate the claims made in
page one. Most readers will only read page 1.
2. Customization:Visualize the hiringmanagerof the targetcompanyandfigure outwhatproblem
ishe/she tryingtosolve byhiringyou, and then structure first page so that it provides the right
information quickly to him. Reflect on the role definition and structure your first page
appropriately.ItisOK(andgood) to create multiple versions of the resume, and in those cases,
there can be different 1st
page contents and same page 2 contents.
3. Focus on Value,not Activity:Resume shouldhighlightwhoyouare (strengths, skills, etc.) more
than what you have done (what you did, how you did it, etc.).
a. You should translate your experience into statements of strengths and skills that are
transferable across industries. For example, designing a command-line tool to provide
interface toadminoptionsinanembeddedsystemisnotmuchdifferentfromdesigning
adminpanel fora website,andthe resume shouldreflectthisbyusingright context and
phrases (‘designed and implemented interface for power users of the system’). If
current domain is very different than target domain, this becomes critical because it
may be hard to understand everything about the resume.
4. Prioritization:Prioritizationisakeyelement. Everysentence inthe resume shouldbe written as
if thisis the lastsentence the reader is going to read. So it should be crisp, it should expand on
whatis saidbefore,anditshouldbe a lessimportantfactaboutyou thanall previous sentences
(because this sentence may never be read).
5. Create and Sustain Interest- Resume should tell a story. A good story builds on multiple small
storieswhichruninlayersand inparallel.Keepthe audience(resume reader)inmind,andmake
sure you don’t lose his interest. Best way to do so is to keep a human touch, use following
principles
a. Use active voice rather than passive voice
b. Use your work/life examples to illustrate a point rather than general statements
c. Be honest and understate your strengths rather than go overboard
d. Build a case for your suitability through right use of words and examples
6. Grab and Hold Attention: Highlight things that matter to the reader. Here are a few ways to
highlight:
a. Visual formatting – Use bold, underline, italics, don’t use colors
b. Sentence restructuring – Put keywords and phrases at the beginning of the sentence
c. Resume restructuring –Move the importantstrengthsandexperiencestothe beginning
of the resume

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Creating domain-independent resumes
If you are movingfromone domaintoanother (say semiconductor to internet), it is important to make
the resume domainindependentsothatpeople in the target domain can understand your experience,
accomplishment and suitability.
Follow these steps to create a domain-independent resume:
1. Identification:Identify 3-4keyexperiences/projectsthatyouare mostproudof because of what
you accomplished there.
2. Elaboration: Write 8-10 sentencestodescribe eachof these projects,withfollowingconditions:
a. Avoidanyjargon of your industry – if you must use them, define them in non-domain-
specific terms.
b. Clearly state the following:
i. Organizational context (team sizes, location, roles, goals, etc.)
ii. Your personal contribution
iii. Benefits accruing to the company in business terms (revenue, profit, market
share, customer satisfaction, etc.)
iv. Skills (technical and soft) you gained in the process
c. Create a 3 line project summary that can be used like an elevator pitch for this project
3. Categorization: Review each of these projects and categorize your contributions and learning
for each project in following areas:
a. Domain Knowledge (thingswhichare specifictoyourdomain,andis notrelevant in any
other domain)
b. Technical/Hard skills (programming languages, algorithms, data structures,
analytical/problem solving) – think in terms of your engineering education
c. Business/Soft skills (managing team, cross-boundary collaboration, negotiation,
managerial economics) – think in terms of business education you have received
d. Smarts – Raw intelligence (which is transferrable across domain) like patents (actual
patentisdomainknowledge,butthe factthat youhave X patentsshowsyou are smart),
paper publishing, intrapreneurial work, quizzing, volunteering, etc.
4. Creation: Summarize the 3b and 3c into bullet points and use them to create the first page of
your resume. 3d can be in the first page if it has some real cool stuff. 3a should be on second
page, buried in the experience details
5. Validation:Give yourresume to someone fromoutsideyour domain and ask them to comment
on ease of understanding
Here is an example of how the outcome of categorization maylooklike,Don’tuse thistable anywherein
the resume, this is just intermediate data for your reference and to do #4 above well):
Project Project
Summary
Domain
Knowledge
Technical/Hard
skills
Business/Soft
skills
Smarts
Project1 A tool to
debug
How chip
design
Highly optimized
search across
Managing
ambiguous
Filed3 patents
and 2 papers

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complex
designs
generated by
another tool
software work
and can be
validated to
work
large data sets,
creating a new
language to
handle user
instructions,
delivering 0
defect code
requirements
from
customers
presented,
best manager
award for 2
consecutive
years
Project2

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Resume Structure
I don’twant torecommenda resume templatesince there are somanyequallygood versions out there
(see office.com templates), but I do want to provide some guidance on what should go in a few
important sections. All the sections are optional, but if you have them, consider using the same
sequence as given below.
Objective
State the desired role – be generic because different companies describe roles differently. This is an
important section when you are clear about what you want to get (for ex: ‘Engineering Management
position in product companies’). If you are flexible about the role and/or you are not clear what you
want, you should skip this section.
Strengths
Describe the strengths.Focusonthingsyouare extremelygoodat and can perform well in any context.
For example, if you are a good manager, you will be good in all types of companies, and you should
mentionithere.This section will be read by everyone (even those who skim through your resume) so
write it using keywords that you want reader to remember about you.
Achievements
Thissectionshouldprovide the keyphrasesfromyourexperiences that will be relevant for the reader.
Most resumesare readonline,souse formatting(bold,italics, hyperlinks) to draw attention to the right
places. This section is also an expanded version of strengths section, in that it makes the strengths
concrete. For example, you may say ‘Good manager of distributed teams’ in your strengths section; in
Achievements section, you will say ‘Managed teams of 10-20 people distributed in India, Finland and
Germany to deliver a complex product in the area of e-commerce’, with right areas highlighted. This
may be the last sectionthatmanyreaderswill spendtime on, so make sure it highlights the companies
you worked in, projects/domains you worked in, and contributions you made, and recognitions you
received.
Experience Summary
This is useful to add in page 1 somewhere if you have more than 7-8 years’ experience in multiple
companies.Thisensuresthatall companynamesare mentionedon this page without the reader diving
intoexperience details.Thisalsoactsas an index toexperience detailsif the readerwantstounderstand
detailsof experience foraspecificcompany.Thiscanbe a listof companiesyou have worked in and the
roles you have performed. Readers can choose to selectively dive into details based on this list.
Experience details
Thisis entire page 2 if youhave all of the above sectionsinyourresume. If you have worked in multiple
rolesinthe same company,create one sectionto capture entire duration,andthendescribe workunder
each role.Itisimportant to showlengthof service inacompany since thatsignalsyourdurabilityaswell
as depth of your experience. Description of experience should be crisp in stating the following:
 Problem statement (what was required to be done?)

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 Outcome (Whatdidcompanyget outof this - on-time delivery, $X revenue, customer sat, etc.)
 Your contribution (What did you do, your accomplishment)
 (optional) Yourlearningsif any.Thismayhave beenmentionedinsome earliersection,in which
case this can be skipped.

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Conclusion
A resume is one of the most important documents you create in and for your career. It is important to
focus on right things and present in right manner when creating a resume. A good resume is 2 page
long,presentsclearlythe valueofferedtothe new org in first 5-10 sentences in the resume, has lots of
numbersandbulletpointstopresentdetails,andiseasytoreadand understandfor individuals outside
the domain of the resume writer. Also, it is important that you write your own resume rather than
gettingsomeone else towrite itforyou(there are manyservicesavailableonline thatwill do it for you).
Thisis because whenyou spend time writing and rewriting your resume, you essentially sharpen your
pitch you give to interviewers, thus improving your chances of doing better at interviews. Also, you
know your own accomplishments and value best, and the more time you spend thinking about it
yourself, the better chance you have at presenting your best image forward.